


To Protect and Comfort

by coffeegrl



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, References to Depression, References to anxiety
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 13:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20995364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeegrl/pseuds/coffeegrl
Summary: While working on a case, Malcolm is kidnapped. After he's found, Gil steps in to care for and comfort Malcolm while he recovers. (Short, but to the point.)





	To Protect and Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> References to suicide, depression, and anxiety. I have never dealt with suicide and have never needed medication for depression or anxiety. I mean no disrespect and apologize for any details I may have gotten wrong in portraying these issues. I rated this teen and up due to the mental health issues referenced.

“Please let him be OK, please let him be OK, please, please, please, please, please,” Gil thought to himself as he, Dani, and JT raced through the abandoned storage unit facility, paramedics following close behind. 

The serial killer nicknamed ‘The Pageant Slayer’ had killed four women over the last month. They had been different ages and races, in addition to having different careers and living in widely different areas of Manhattan: the Upper East Side, the Bronx, Harlem, and the Village. The only thing the women had in common was that they had all competed in beauty pageants at some point in their lives and had won at least one crown. But even there, the competitions had little in common. One woman had won Miss Cornstalk in a small Kansas town (population less than 1,000) when she was seventeen and had not competed in a pageant before or since that time. She was forty years old when she was murdered and worked on Wall Street. A far cry from that small, middle-of-nowhere town where she had reigned as Miss Cornstalk for one year before going off to college then the bright lights of New York City with an MBA. 

The killer not only went after women who had been beauty pageant winners, but also somehow found their sashes and replica crowns and put them on the women after killing them and sitting them upright in their beds. 

Three days ago, Malcolm had been poring over the evidence, tweaking his profile of the killer when suddenly he had jumped up and yelled, “I’ve got it! Oh my God, I’ve got it!” 

“Got what?” Dani asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. 

“I think I know who the killer is and where he’s going to strike next!” 

It had been impossible for the NYPD to provide protection for every former beauty pageant winner living in Manhattan. And that had been assuming the killer wasn’t going to branch out to the other four boroughs as well. They had been able to look up previous winners of well-known pageants and find out if they were living in New York or not. But when the third victim had been the winner of a small, local pageant in Kansas that, while going back almost 100 years in the small town’s history but had never been heard of by anyone outside of a 50 mile radius of the town, they realized it was impossible to know who else in the city had won a title at some point in their lives. 

Malcolm was determined that the killer was going to strike in Hell’s Kitchen next. Every year, a private school in the area put on a beauty pageant as a fundraiser. People could buy individual tickets or groups of eight could purchase a table. There was a dinner, silent auction, and a beauty pageant with high school competitors to round out the event. 

“Are you sure about this Bright?” Gil asked. “We can’t go around starting a panic.” 

“I’m positive,” Malcolm had said. “Look, this school has been having this fundraiser for 25 years. In fact, their exact 25 year anniversary is next week.”

“And you think the killer is going to kill a former winner?” JT asked.

“Yes! See,” he said, pulling up a newspaper article on his computer. “Ten years ago, a freshman girl who wanted to compete committed suicide when the other competitors bullied her into not competing.”

“No offense,” JT said, “but she doesn’t exactly look like beauty pageant material.” Dani smacked him on the arm.

“That’s just it. In the article her own parents admit that she knew she didn’t stand a chance of actually winning. She was shy and was already on depression and anxiety medication. But she was trying to push herself out of her comfort zone. Her own therapist admitted to encouraging her to enter when she expressed interest in the pageant. She had told her parents she wanted to try new things now that she was in high school. She thought it would help her meet people she might otherwise never have the chance or courage to interact with.”

“Poor girl wanted to make friends and stretch her boundaries, and instead succumbs to the bullying of her peers and decides there’s no point to even trying. I mean, let’s face it,” Dani said. “Pageant winners are always a certain physical type. They knew she wasn’t a threat to anyone else who wanted to win. Why not let her compete and just have the experience?”

“According to this article,” Malcolm said, bringing up a new screen, “the other girls, as well as a few parents, didn’t want her to compete because they didn’t want a ‘laughing stock’ in the competition. Her fellow students teased and bullied her so badly that she downed her entire 3 month supply of both medications and chased the pills with a bottle of vodka from her parent’s liquor cabinet.”

“I guess I don’t get it,” JT said. “Why not just find another way to make friends? And what could those girls have been saying that was so bad anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “Nobody will ever really know what was going on inside that poor girl’s head. Not even an amazing profiler like myself,” he said, smiling because he knew that was going to make JT roll his eyes.

“And I don’t know what it’s like to be a teenage boy,” Dani said, “but I do know what it’s like being a teenage girl. Boys may be mean and cruel but girls…..we can be downright wicked and evil.”

“Got that right,” JT said, earning him another smack on the arm from Dani. 

“Before I have to put the two of you in separate corners for a time out,” Gil said, coming around the table and giving Dani and JT stern looks, “who did win that year?”

“Nobody,” Malcolm said. “They held the dinner and silent auction, but there was no pageant out of respect for the family of the deceased girl.”

“And you think this person is either related to or had been friends with the girl and is now taking revenge?”

“Not just anybody,” Malcolm said. “Her older brother, Ryan. According to a police report for the incident, she had three older brothers. John was in Iraq and Nick was working in Doctors without Borders. Neither had access to a phone on the night she committed suicide. But Ryan, he was a freshman at UCLA. According to him, she had called him about an hour before she took the pills. He brushed her off and told her he didn’t have time for her and her silly childish concerns. He was a college man now. He hung up without even saying goodbye because he didn’t want to be late to a frat party. He later said that he wondered if she would still be alive if he had just listened to her, really noticed how sad she sounded. If he had just been on the phone with her, maybe she would have been OK.”

“So he feels guilty and decides to murder pageant winners who had nothing to do with his sister’s death?”

“Guilt can manifest itself in mysterious ways. Especially when you look back on an event and wonder if your actions, or lack of actions, caused someone else to die.” Malcolm and Gil locked eyes and Gil knew he was thinking about how he had chosen to call the cops on his dad when he was a child. Gil knew that if Malcolm hadn’t made that phone call, and his dad had continued to kill, that Malcolm would have carried that guilt with him forever. 

So that was how they had found themselves in Hell’s Kitchen that night. Dani had been able to get a public list of past winners and five of them still lived in Hell’s Kitchen. Another seven lived in Manhattan and three lived in other boroughs. The rest had all moved out of New York. 

They had contacted all the women but hadn’t been able to get approval for police protection or a warrant for Ryan’s arrest. Not based on a hunch with no evidence, according to the judge (for the warrant) and Gil’s superior (for protection for the women). When they went to Ryan’s apartment “just to talk,” it had been locked up tight and was in the kind of building where there would be hell to pay if they pulled the old, “Did you hear someone yell for help?” bit and just kicked the door down. 

Dani and JT were walking the area with Malcolm, trying to figure out if the killer would strike one specific place over another due to a variety of factors when Malcolm had gone off on his own. Two hours later, Dani and JT were facing the wrath of Gil when they admitted to not knowing where Malcolm had gone off to and why he never rejoined them. 

The next day, the station received a letter that said, “I have one of yours. I’m going to finish what I started and no one can stop me. Killing Malcolm will bring me little joy so maybe I’ll give him back to you when I’m finished with my mission. However, even a little joy is better than none.”

“You were supposed to be keeping an eye on him! He’s former FBI but he’s NOT NYPD! And, in case you haven’t noticed, Malcolm doesn’t always make the best decisions. If Malcolm dies,” Gil said, looking Dani and JT squarely in their eyes, “I’ll be transferring you to different precincts and we will never work together again.” Gil stormed out of the room. 

He knew he had gone overboard. Malcolm was a grown man. Dani and JT were not his baby-sitters. But dammit! Malcolm was the closest thing he had to a son. He had lost his wife over three years ago. He didn’t want to lose Malcolm too.

Dani and JT just looked at each other and they both knew something in that moment after Gil had stormed out. Gil was a great man and a great cop. He had been an amazing mentor to both of them and even gave fatherly advice on many occasions. But they knew that neither of them would ever have the kind of bond with Gil that Malcolm had. 

Three days later, they finally caught Ryan trying to break into one of the women’s apartments in Hell’s Kitchen. A neighbor had reported seeing a strange man hanging around the building. Simple as that. Part of that whole, “If you see something, say something” campaign. He was arrested and, after a search of his apartment turned up evidence of having murdered those four women, he confessed and even admitted to kidnapping Malcolm.

Gil, Dani, and JT had raced to the upper part of Manhattan where there was an abandoned storage facility. Any farther north, and they wouldn’t even have been in New York City anymore. 

“Unit 56! He said unit 56!” Gil yelled, as they ran through the halls of the facility. Finally, they found it. Gil yanked the door up on the unit and there was Malcolm. Tied to a chair. Bloody, beaten, and bruised, but somehow awake. He looked up and locked eyes with Gil. Gil ran to the chair he was tied on and started undoing the ropes. 

“You found me,” Malcolm said. 

“Were you worried?” Gil asked, trying to keep the shakiness out of his voice as the paramedics pulled him back to assess Malcolm’s condition and injuries.

“Not for one second,” Malcolm said.

**Author's Note:**

> The next chapter will be a pure hurt/comfort chapter between Gil and Malcolm. If that's not your thing, then you can pretend chapter 1 is the whole story. Thanks for reading! Comments, constructive criticism, and kudos are always welcome!


End file.
